Art Rosengarten

The Spiritual Traveler

TNP is a guide for the modern spiritual traveler. Who exactly is this person?

Is the spiritual traveler today a member of an organized religion, sect, or school of consciousness? Is he or she a regular churchgoer, a “born-again” Christian, a reformed Jew, a devout Catholic, or a sincere Unitarian, or perhaps subscribes to “alternative” religions like neo-paganism, Scientology, or Peruvian shamanism? Is the spiritual traveler today someone who makes regular pilgrimages to holy places like Jerusalem, Luxor, Varanasi, or perhaps Sedona, Arizona? Is this what is meant by “spiritual traveler?”

Is the modern spiritual traveler someone who is likely to use prayer on a regular basis, or perhaps meditation, chanting, trance, or positive affirmation? Is he or she likely to keep a dream journal? Do they spend more time than the average citizen in “alpha,” where right brain activity is engaged? Would TNP, therefore, be designed for people who have special access to altered states of consciousness?

Would this person today be an initiate of a secret order, perhaps a student of Gurdjieff, or the Rosicrucians, or a member of the Gelupa sect of Tibetan Buddhism? Has this person likely experimented with exotic things like psychedelics, communal living, remote viewing, necromancy, goetic demons, or Eastern meditation? Would he or she be a regular reader of The Meta Arts Magazine, The Yoga Journal, or the Dictionary of Angels? Is he someone who has taken the teachings of Jesus Christ as his savior into his heart?

Could it be that the modern spiritual traveler is defined more simply and generically as a basically positive and loving person, someone who is mindful and calm, someone who practices good values and ethics like the Golden Rule or “random acts of kindness,” and chooses to live a well-balanced, compassionate, conscious lifestyle?

The answer, of course, to all of the above is “none of the above.” None of these things have any bearing whatsoever on whether a person can be considered a “modern spiritual traveler,” that is, not from the perspective of TNP. One may just as well be a cranky agnostic carnivore with a penchant for guns, Latin women, and Arena Football. “Spiritual credentials” must be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to the challenges of travel.

Beneath The Chaos and Exhaustion

There is, however, one particular attribute that quite succinctly describes the essence of the modern “spiritual traveler” from the perspective of TNP--confused. That is, deeply, existentially, profoundly, confused. Modern spiritual travelers are people confused over the meaning of their true identity and direction, confused over who they really are and where they’re really going. None of the above-mentioned belief systems adequately address the problem to their satisfaction. If they have indeed done the job effectively, what need would there be for spiritual travel? One has already arrived.

The confusion the spiritual traveler commonly feels, however, is not entirely unpleasant or unwanted, bringing as it does a certain quality of adventure, depth, and irony to what is lacking in ordinary existence. For them, this world is not enough. Things are not as they seem. The truth is mysterious.

But profound confusion alone hardly distinguishes The Traveler from the rest of humanity, it is not that “spiritual travelers” are profoundly confused whereas others are not. To the contrary, all human beings share the fundamental condition and circumstance of being lost, albeit reluctantly. The vast majority of modern citizens, however, unlike the lowly spiritual traveler, spend their lives trying to hide this disconcerting truth from themselves. But as the late Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa writes in the modern Buddhist classic, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Shambhala, 1973):

We attempt to rationalize this painful situation, trying to find some way to protect ourselves, some way to explain our predicament to ego’s satisfaction. We look at it this way and that, and our mind is extremely busy. Ego is very professional, overwhelmingly efficient in its way. When we think that we are working on the forward-moving process of attempting to empty ourselves out, we find ourselves going backward, trying to secure ourselves, filling ourselves up. And this confusion continues and intensifies until we finally discover that we are totally lost, that we have lost our ground, that there is no starting point or middle or end because our mind has been so overwhelmed by our own defense mechanisms. (p. 45)

For the “average citizen,” however, concerns over “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?” were settled years ago in post-adolescence (hurried along by the pressures of preparing ego for the rigors of adulthood). “This IS who I am,” and “This IS where I’m going” (particularly in America) is something, on average, clearly and triumphantly decided by the age of twenty-five during the profoundly wise years that follow undergraduate school. One passes forward into full-fledged adulthood well-located. Existential confusion, first discovered at perhaps 19, is pretty much resolved by the ripened age of thirty.

Not so for the spiritual traveler. Beyond the obligations of economic sustenance (“work), the challenges of living with others (“love”), the anguish of diminishing remainders of time (“death”), and the deluge of postmodern stimuli (“television”), remarkably, the spiritual traveler remains loyal to his fundamental uncertainty like a father to his wayward son. Abandon it, the traveler knows, and something central to the human soul is taken.

It is not coincidental that the energy-demands of modern living (from thirty onward) seem to work in tandem with the average citizen’s efforts thereafter to hide their confusion from themselves. It marks the very genesis of the modern soul-fallen excuse: “Who has the luxury of profound confusion these days?” The rat race has supplanted sensitivity spiritual dislocation.

Conveniently, in the static illusion of permanent residency, the world appears oppressively solid-- we could hammer it down if we had enough nails. Better to live at the brink of destruction (in our minds), having leveraged our confusion to maintain the objects of ego gratification— careers and income, cars and abdominal muscles, pleasure quotas and credit card debt. It almost feels real, living at the brink that is.

Not so for the modern spiritual traveler. No puritan to brinksmanship himself, somehow he still manages to preserve his fundamental “lostness.” This is no small task, and by his example the world is given hope. TNP, in its mission statement, is partly a “Travel Guide For Spiritual Location”—meaning, it should be put into service by those who are properly lost. It is not for the sea-sick, the permanent resident, the found, or the already-enlightened.

Often this “dislocation” experience is held in abeyance by spiritual travelers who double as ordinary adults. The pangs of impermanence become compartmentalized into the subtext of daily experience. Mundane directives may preoccupy the front seat of their days (“go to bank, pick up kids, defrost chicken”), but “Who the hell am I in this life?” still murmurs in the background, alongside “what is the future of this journey?” Such is the territory that TNP maps out.

For the traveler, once a necessary “task-cycle” is completed and temporary pleasures have expired, a momentary gap opens, before the “repetition compulsion” starts onto the next cycle. The gap occurs mostly in mental units during breaks in the action. It is during this brief observation post, this pause in the spin-cycle, that the background questioning begins to gnaw and fester. “Yes I’ve managed my functional obligations,” the traveler acknowledges to himself, “but for what end?” “Where am I really going in this?” “Could I be wiser in what I do?” etc. Such marks the moment when the traveler may turn to the Tarot of the Nine Paths (TNP) for guidance. Not simply to divine his future (an equally worthwhile endeavor), but firstly to map out the coordinates of his present location, its landscape and neighboring states, and the terrain that must be traveled. He has accepted his confusion with dignity and honor, and has found that it is really no big deal. To the contrary, it allows him to engage the TNP matrix as a guidebook for his wanderings.

What follows is the TNP Matrix itself, wholly without explanation. Analyses will come later in another column, but for the truly confused it is perhaps better first to simply hand you the map. I trust that your own fundamental confusion will lead the way.

Your questions and comments are appreciated. Art Rosengarten